Day Trip to Port Arthur – Beyond the Little Red Dot

Port Arthur is one of the most well known attractions nearest to Hobart. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it takes only 90 minutes to get there from Hobart driving non-stop and is doable in a day trip. This is also an excellent way to experience the natural landscapes of Tasmania and the attractions along the way.

Leaving in the morning, we took the A3, also known as the Tasman Highway from Hobart heading eastwards. This highway will bring you past the Hobart International Airport. Continuing on the A3, we followed our GPS onto C324 which went along the coast until we reached Eaglehawk Neck. This is a narrow strip of land that connects the Tasman Peninsula from the rest of Tasmania. From here its only less than 20km from Port Arthur, but first we made a few stops for food and some sight seeing.

Our first stop was the Chocolate Foundry. This is a small but cozy place to buy some unique hand made chocolates. I even got myself a bar of chocolate soap. Unfortunately they don’t sell any food or beverages for dine in.

Besides these pralines, there is also a whole variety of different types of chocolate. You will be spoilt for choice if you are a chocolate lover.

Our stop at the Chocolate Foundry was a short one as they only sold chocolates and didn’t have any sort of cafe. We then made our way to a lavender farm further down the road for lunch.

The Port Arthur Lavender Farm is a popular place to stop for lunch. Surrounded by lavender fields and located beside a bay, this picturesque spot is ideal to break your journey. As we were here in winter, the lavender flowers were not in bloom, so we were content to just look at grassy fields.

Sitting here for lunch would be nice but it was winter and less than 10°C outside.

Of course they serve all kinds of lavender flavoured beverages and desserts. I got myself this lavender latte.

After a hearty lunch we made our way to the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo. This wildlife sanctuary is actually just a short way down the road from the Chocolate Foundry but we decided to fill our stomachs first at the lavender farm and backtrack to the Unzoo.

The Tasmanian Devil Unzoo is a good place to view the Tasmanian Devil. For some of us (like me) the Tasmanian Devil was some cartoon character and I’ve never seen a real one before. Its a member of the marsupial species of animals together with kangaroos and wallabies. However, unlike kangaroos, devils are nocturnal carnivores and the largest of its kind. They are extinct on the Australian mainland and can only be found in Tasmania. In the wild they survive as scavengers eating dead animals. The devil is considered an endangered species as their numbers have been wiped out by a facial tumour disease since the 1990’s.

Face to face with the Tasmanian Devil. Its rather small, like the size of a small dog. But don’t let its size fool you. This little fellow was really aggressive and trying to jump at us despite a high wooden enclosure., thinking that we had food for it.

The Unzoo is named because there are no cages to keep the animals in. They roam freely except for the Tasmanian Devils who have their own enclosure to protect them. Here are some wallabies grazing along the main path.

We even got up close to hand feed some kangaroos who were just lying in the sun. They were so lazy to get up for their food and we had to literally walk up to feed them while they laid on the ground.

After more than an hour’s stop at the Unzoo, we continued our way to Port Arthur and arrived around 3.00pm. This meant that we had only around 2 hours to look around before sunset. If you are coming in winter, do take note that the sun sets early and you should plan your sight seeing trips accordingly.

There is a visitor’s center where we bought entry tickets which included a boat ride on the bay.

A view of the prison building as you exit the Visitor’s Center.

Port Arthur was originally a timber station in 1830 but soon became a penal settlement and gained notoriety as a prison for repeat offenders and the worst criminals. The settlement was designed to be escape proof, surrounded by shark infested waters and guarded by the “Dog Line” at the narrow isthmus of Eaglehawk Neck. The prison operated for 47 years until 1877. Prisoners were made to work on ship building, shoe making and agriculture, and there was 12,000-14,000 of them during this period. If you needed a lot of cheap labour at that time for ship building, convicts were the perfect solution.

As time passed the convicts grew older and sicker or died, and most of the available trees for timber had been cut down. By 1877 the prison was abandoned and the last convicts removed. Port Arthur was renamed as Carnarvon and the land was parceled out and auctioned off for residential and commercial development. “Dark tourism” also started as tourists came here to see first hand the horrors of a prison settlement. As tourism grew, the name of Port Arthur was reinstated in 1927 and it was designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010.